Apple has been criticised before - but never for promoting original sin.

Seemingly emboldened by upcoming national legislation on blasphemy, Russian Orthodox Christians have defaced the logos on Apple products because they consider the bitten Apple to be anti-Christian, says Russian news agency Interfax (in Russian).

The radical Christians have replaced the Apple logo with a cross, claiming that the current Apple logo – well-known around the world and often voted one of the world's most popular logos – symbolises the original sin of Adam and Eve and is generally insulting to the Christian faith.

I don’t believe it. Also, “orthodox” is not radical. But let’s go right to the source, and see what Interfax - the most trusted name in news! - has to say. First we’ll wash it through Google Translate. Headline: "Orthodox Christians in Russia are beginning to change the "anti-Christian" bitten apple on their device "Apple" on crosses."

Portal "Interfax-Religion" became aware of several cases where the Orthodox, including priests, changed icon bitten apple logo on the image of the cross.

According to them, bitten apple - the symbol described in the Bible, original sin, it is anti-Christian, while the cross in Christianity symbolizes victory over death, the Savior, the redemption of their original sin of Adam and Eve.

Logo on the first "Apple" was depicted Sir Isaac Newton sitting under a tree on which hung the apple. Later, one of the advertising agencies developed a new logo for the company - the image of bitten apple. There are many opinions as to why it was chosen as the logo, but the official version does not.

Considering the ongoing radical orthodox Christian hysteria in the Russian Federation, which began earlier this year, and the will of authorities to assist the confession that openly supported presidential candidate Vladimir Putin early in 2012, Apple may run into problems in the country. If the laws pass the presidential clan-controlled parliament (which is highly-likely), the ultra-radical orthodox activists may accuse Apple of anti-religious deeds, which may in the worst-case scenario halt sales of Apple products in Russia.

To paraphrase John Gruber, what is it about Apple that makes otherwise intelligent people take leave of their senses when they write about it? From the sound of the story, Radicals are walking into Apple stores and slapping stickers on the logo, when it’s entirely possible that the author of the original piece heard about one guy who taped a picture of a cross on his own computer - which seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t that be rather sacrilegious? And why isn’t that word spelled “sacreligious?”

I give the story one day before it’s put up on Buzzfeed. (Checking . . . not yet.)

In a 2009 interview with CreativeBits, Rob Janoff, the man who drew the logo, reflected on the theories about his work. He dismisses Sir Isaac or the Bible as source material and, while he says he is charmed by the links with the Turing story, he says he was unaware of them at the time.

"I'm afraid it didn't have a thing to do with it," he said. "It's a wonderful urban legend."

Janoff says that he received no specific brief from Steve Jobs, and although he's hazy about how he settled on the simple outline of an apple, the reason for the bite is crystal clear: it's there for scale, he says, so that a small Apple logo still looks like an apple and not a cherry.

YAY US Minnesota is the least miserable state in the union. (North Dakota is 48th.) Does this mean we’re the happiest? No; it just means we’re not miserable by the Bloomberg definition of Misery, which includes things like “income inequality.”

Can anyone explain the first image in the slideshow? It’s a map, yes. But there’s another layer, and it looks like someone shooting a steering wheel from the legwell of the passenger side. You can head over to Getty Images yourself and do a search for “road trip,” if you’re looking for the original. Good luck. I gave up after 39 pages of search results. You have no idea how much you start to loathe humanity after looking through page after page of stock photos. STOP BEING HAPPY, YOU PEOPLE. You there, grinning as you hang out the window because you’re on a road trip with your best buds: stop being an archetype. You there, little Missy: stop taking pictures of yourself in front of things. You ain’t all that.

A cloud-based operating system being developed in Beijing would be the equivalent of running Windows or Mac OS online rather than booting it up from a computer's hard drive. That means just an online connection would be needed to turn any "dumb" device with a very basic computer system into a smart computing device — whether that device is a tablet, a smartphone, a refrigerator, a washing machine or a factory robot.

The Chinese "TransOS" system is being developed by Yaoxue Zhang and Yuezhi Zhou of Tsinghua University. A device using TransOS would need a minimal amount of computer code to start up and connect to the Internet. More details are expected in an upcoming special issue of the International Journal of Cloud Computing.

By “Cloud,” of course, they mean “terrestrial-based server farm operating at the pleasure of the authoritarian / corporatist state.” This would present the government with a quandary: one kill switch, or lots of individually targeted ones? Hey, who says we can’t have both? No thanks. The OS-in-the-cloud thing has been popular with some segments for a long time, and I’ve no idea why. Oh hai we upgraded the OS with a minor tweak and broke six programs you use daily, and they’re all made by small software outfits that gave up long ago trying to address compatability issues.

There's an ad on the page:

Is it just me, or do you automatically skip any ad that uses “Obey” and “Weird”? You find the words in weight-loss ads as well. One Weird Tip to Lose Weight! To me “Obey” and “Weird” are the two words that say “you’re about to be sold berry juice or a membership in something that has a recurring fee with a $59.95 ‘bookkeeping’ charge if you cancel.”